This mod takes place during the Black Mesa incident. You take on the role of a HECU Marine as you fight your way through different sections of the facility and carry out varied missions. *This is not a rebuild of any game, but features areas from Half-life, Blue Shift & Opposing force in the Half-Life fashion.
It's a really great mod, with lots of puzzles and etc. Problems are the very cheap situations and glitches, but then again they will be fixed later on.
Overall, I recommend it!
Another joyous romp through black mesa :D
I was a little deterred by the mixture of low-def textures and high-def textures, and I was disturbed by the fact that my allies killed unarmed scientists and barneys. I know I'm the HECU but I've grown so accustomed to hanging out with Barney and the science team it felt awkward passing them by when my friends butchered them :(
Still, I liked the gameplay and it was very fun for what it was :)
Something no Half-life fan should miss :3
Mesa - Fallback is what you get when great ideas meet limited skill/resources. Interesting puzzles, neat ideas and nice twists on HL1 era maps as well as brand new maps make this worth a play play. The level detail leaves a lot to be desired, with large and often empty maps that often contain rookie glitches and bugs. "Borrowed" assets from various sources keep the mod from having a constant art direction, but the mod is very fun.
Inconsistency in this mod really hurts my eyes, but what's the worst thing about it is schematic gameplay (go to place A and kill everyone, then go to place B and do the same), bad map design and the overall "amatourishness" beaming from it.
About 50% of maps are places from Half-Life and it's expansions. It feels like the mod creator either got bored/lazy or or just didn't know what to do next.
I can appreciate what combine- was going for here and there are some laudable aspects to the mod but in the end it just comes across as a cheap, poorly-made riff on Opposing Force. And why the hell is Black Mesa full of HL2 rebels?
7/10. mod still has a few bugs. I even got stuck at map "op4c" because the next would just not load for some reason
Its great to play Some Half-life Related mods/games Again!
It's really fun but some of the maps got a bit confusing.
Invisible walls and unclear direction aren't good ways to introduce a mod.
NPC lines were... sigh. We all know every single citizen line by now, you're not fooling anybody when my HECU friend says "let me get out of your way".
Assassins were introduced poorly. And they're weak as ****! Not a huge fan of the garb, either. They look too much like HECU that I keep wondering about friendly fire.
But what about those actual friendly fire incidents?! I can't hurt my team, so why do they suddenly turn on me? I did enjoy the challenge, though...
Night vision is useless. Like, why bother if you're only going to make it work in a 2 foot circle 2 feet in front of you? And the same on/off sound makes it unclear if you even have it on, just wasting away battery for when you actually need it- ah, who am I kidding... you'll never need it.
Story/gameplay elements were a little weak at times. Tooltips and textovers aren't very Half-Life. You should be able to communicate my task at hand without literally spelling it out in front of my eyes.
One time a Zombine got me good. Pulled a nade and my only exit was blocked by a member of my own squad. The last words I heard as I desperately tried to push him aside were, "We have to get out of here!"
The 9 shot pistol was an odd choice. Looked and sounded cool, but its existence didn't make sense and there wasn't much point in using it due to limited ammo and low power.
So... what was with that wide-open nothingness in the sand?!
WHAT is with the Vortigaunts! Why do their attacks do 100+ damage, able to kill you in one shot without armor, guaranteed. And on Normal, no less, all while firing so much faster than normal. At close range, you need the magnum to take them out and you have to be quick and accurate.
And why was there a dead rebel at the end of that encounter? Time traveler? Combine energy chargers? Lambda caches? Combine radio chatter? What?
And why do Houndeyes groan like HECU when killed? Why did that box erupt into a shower of shattered glass?
Mapping was at least good. Some questionable wide open areas with half-assed or anachronistic props, but direction was overall clear and engaging so the mod was definitely playable. Boxes were frustrating: no consistency in whether boxes contained items or how many hits to break. Unless you spent ages breaking boxes, you probably missed a lot of items.
Badass original music. This mod has some high-flying highs and some WTF lows. Shoddy and sloppy, but still kept me playing. That's gotta count for something.
Now Operation Four?! Loved the intro. Despite the rebels (ugh), this is the kind of frantic energy I haven't seen captured in any Black Mesa mods. Who is friend? Who is foe? No time to think about whether that scientist is a threat; better blast him just in case because I saw that other white coat guy holding a gun. Execution was brilliant.
Rescue captured soldiers? Captured by who? And why is there a full-blown prison in Black Mesa?
Then it's over. Quickest operation ever. Boarding the APC was not well-communicated. Some environments were maze-like with too many dead ends and switchbacks. Operation Two started off so well...
Now we're on Operation Five. Starting to feel like deleted scenes from Opposing Force. Hm.
Confusing interactability. Doors that look like passive textures can be opened, standard grate dead ends are suddenly able to be smashed, etc... the game has you missing all the "obvious" paths forward unless you're crowbarring everything in sight. Riveting stuff.
Oh man, that over-the-top scream people do when they die. Bash a scientist with a crowbar? Blown speaker.
Environments got lazier over time. Started to feel like GldSrc.
You give me the gravity gun, but no way to make use of it?
Operation Seven (yes, we're still going) is just plain sloppy. Confusing direction, poor lighting made 10x more frustrating with the stupid nightvision, text overlays, poor identification of props... There's a lot of content here, and I did play through the whole thing so it's not hopeless, but I wish the author had cut the mod in half and spent double the time on each section.
Wtf was that sniper vent puzzle? How should anybody be expected to see that solution? Even worse, this mod twists the knife. The radio said "retreat" so logically I went back. Then I got softlocked downstairs because the doors back up top were suddenly replaced with concrete walls. Finally had to cave to a walkthrough on this one. Softlockin'll do that ter ya. I did give it a valiant effort up to this point since this mod doesn't deserve the effort of a no-walkthrough run.
I was kinda glad when it ended. Wanted to see it through, but it became tiresome after a bit. It's well-intentioned and the maps are pretty fun sometimes, but it needs a lot more polishing.
Maps
Some maps are confusing (especially at the beginning), sometimes the objective is not very clear so one is forced to explore, there are times when I had to watch a gameplay to know where to go, some structures are somewhat repetitive (especially the stairs) but if there is something undeniable it is the battlefields, the environments where the shootings are fought with the black commandos are great, well designed for their function.
Allies
Artificial intelligence often works and a few times the truth is that it does not, however the moments where they really stand out work perfectly, that is, when "cleaning an area".
Enemies
The truth is they are not very varied, they are the same from the first Half Life, only skipping most of them, only the most basic remain and some do not even present a greater threat, except for the black commandos that in large numbers are a pain in the world. ***
Things to emphasize:
* Some textures are taken directly from Half Life 1, which is not bad in most cases but sometimes they are out of tune.
* The Bugs the vast majority of the time are too many, in my particular case I LITERALLY couldn't finish the game due to a bug, but I stayed very much in the end, a few steps away
* The references to the other installments of the franchise give it a nostalgic touch that I like.